Dark futures

I8

I might not live to see it, it might be a hundred years after I die, but [the] fall of democracy, [the] fall of the monetary system, I see that accelerating. I actually can almost see it before I die. Just the way capitalism is like a cancer, they both want the same thing, constant growth, and just like cancer it's starting to chew on itself, and it's starting to get out of the control of the masters, and cracks are starting to show in its facade, and it's evil, and I just feel that blackness getting thicker, [like] fog.

The state and class rule

I22

The Canadian state itself is an instrument of class rule, and the Canadian state itself...has been deployed...against workers, against progressive peopl[e], against the First Nations, against minorities….The Canadian state[‘s]...foundations are colonial, we only have to talk about what happened to the First Nations, we only have to talk about what happened to Louis Riel.

Building commonality

I1

I [found] myself spending more and more of my time on issues I was seeing [around me]....I saw tenant organizing in a similar way that I see union organizing: it's a way to actually build commonality.

Taking back our communities

I27

I think we need to recognize that we want to get to that point where we're really taking back...our community. It's not that I'm opposed to violent stuff, it's just that we need to do the groundwork so we can lay that out. That requires collective decisions, patience, and getting to that point is not something that just happens right away. [That’s] one [of the] thing[s] I can appreciate...about the Zapatistas, they went into the jungle in 1983 and didn't come out until 1994...and I think that's something that we need to think about.

Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will

I13

"Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will," it's a famous saying by Gramsci. In other words you know rationally that the chances of doing anything radical are very small but you do it anyway. You fight anyway. You cannot have optimism of the will without some idea that it would be possible to have a different world and various institutional things have an impact on people's radical imagination.

Imagining the future together

I21

I'm sitting on this side of the river saying ‘I'm happy to cross over with you,’ I don't know what the bridge looks like, but I think we have to sustain this bank of the river so that it doesn't collapse on our way to that one. Because I do not have sufficient radical imagination to know how we're going to get from here to what I imagine for the future, I don't have that. I don't think that gives me an excuse not to keep on keeping on because I think the struggle against slavery in the United States took four hundred years. I've been working for about forty and not consistently….I'm saddened that I don't have the imagination to understand [how] we're going to get from a and b but I think we need to discuss how we're going to get from a to b together because there are smarter people than me.

Reaching people

I7

There's lots of people who, if you tap into their values in the right way, will be able to get onside with you in a way that at least will keep us going, that at least will keep us on a more positive track. I think it's just a matter of bringing out those values and framing them in such a way that they enable us to make more intelligent political decisions.

Imagination and living otherwise

I5

I think that the imagination is what animates really robust, resilient, dynamic social struggles. So in that way the radical imagination has to speak to how we [are] going to organize ourselves. How are we going to make sure, for instance, while we're busy imagining how our radical action is going to change the world that people with kids or with different abilities are going to be able to be a part of this? How are we going to meet the needs of people on the ground? How are we going to make sure that we have the resources to sustain people? How are we going to make sure that we protect each other from oppression whether internally or externally? And I think imagination has something to say to all those things and for me imagination is that. It's the social imagination of a people’s spirit to resist and live otherwise than they do right now.

Moving on

I21

I think that your generation is starting ahead of where my generation started and that brings me some hope. Now I think there are a bunch of things that I think you guys are doing that is totally as stupid as we did but there are things that I think you are thinking about, and concerned about, and critical about, and open about that was not reflected in the left wing movements of the sixties and seventies….there were many things we couldn't have known. But I think this generation of activists has a body of knowledge based on the trajectory of things that have happened in the last thirty, forty years that you are actually more humble about.

Violence and radical social change

I11

I like expressions of violence. Expressions of violence inspire me and feel sincere to me where other expressions of anger don't, they lack something. So I like to see places get windows broken and fires...started but [they’re] mostly...an expression of anger…[they’re] not...the violence that is going to bring down the state.